stubborn thief

Liu Chengzong's idea was trade, mutual trade.

Although summer is not over yet, it is almost time to prepare for winter on the grassland.

The Monan Governor's Mansion obtained a lot of livestock, but the livestock could not be used as food on the grassland after all.

As the saying goes, those with a lot of money and fur don't count, because the risk of breeding is too high, especially on the grassland. A wind disaster or a cold winter may mean everything is gone.

Just like the Harashen tribe, there are so many cattle and sheep and nothing on a calm summer day.

But trade can solve this problem very well, leaving the necessary livestock. The extra livestock can be traded south of the Great Wall in exchange for iron pots, cotton clothes, quilts and even cloth, making the following winter warmer.

The Ming Dynasty could trade with each other, and so could Liu Chengzong. They could even conduct completely complementary trade within and outside the Great Wall.

This will not help much in the short-term supply of military rations, but it will be of great help to the Marshal's Mansion in restoring local production. After all, the economy in various parts of Shaanxi has tended to collapse since the drought.

Many people have been displaced, and even if they are resettled, the local area has completely degraded to an incomplete small-scale peasant economy, and even self-sufficiency is a problem.

To resume production, we must first stabilize the environment, restore connections between counties in the war zone, and create demand through trade.

If these livestock from the Monan Governor's Mansion can be purchased and imported through trade, it will be a good solution to the problem that counties currently have no livestock for breeding.

The situation in the counties on the Guanzhong Plain was a little better. In many prefectures and counties farther north where soldiers and horses were marched back and forth, the situation was so bad that there was not even a single livestock in the entire state or county.

For example, in a place like Jingning Prefecture, not to mention large animals, there are only 1,997 people left, most of whom are disabled. If left alone, there will be no one left soon.

Liu Chengzong wrote this idea to Zhang Zhen, which relieved his worries, but the current short-term ration problem for the army still exists.

He could only set his sights on Xi'an Mansion.

However, the army has not yet moved eastward. The work of arranging the wounded soldiers and collecting the spoils of war lasted for two days, which also allowed the soldiers who fought successively to take a break.

However, in the past two days, good news about military rations came from the direction of Qinzhou in the west.

Mo Yujing and Xie Erhu led 7,000 Mongolian cavalry out of the Huating Ancient Road and rushed to Jingning Prefecture. After going around for a while and seeing no trace of the enemy, they split up and headed south along both sides of the Hulu River, searching every plateau and flat land along the way. Spreading out mightily to the south.

The two of them walked until they reached Qinzhou Guard, only to discover the traces of the Ming army. It was Bai Guangen who had left the Ningxia army station before the war started.

Also discovered were cartloads of grain being transported to Qinzhou Guard.

Bai Guangen received the order to collect grain and grass from Cao Wenzhao, and then he left the main force of the Ningxia Army and went to Longxi alone to collect grain and grain. Bai Guangen didn't want to run to Pingliang City. He targeted Qinzhou Guard from the beginning.

At present, Longxi, Qinzhou, and Pingliang are good places that have never been invaded. Of course, in comparison, Qinzhou is far less prosperous than Pingliang, and the grain reserves cannot supply the huge coalition forces of Cao Wenzhao and Zuo Liangyu for a long time.

But correspondingly, Bai Guangen also knew that he could not afford to offend Pingliang City, and he did not dare to rob Prince Han's Mansion. No matter how rich Pingliang was, it had nothing to do with him.

The Qinzhou Guard was different. Earlier, because Zuo Liangyu was stationed here, Liu Chengzong's main army chose to take the mountain road to enter Guanzhong. Later, although the coalition forces of Zhang Yichuan and Li Zicheng passed through, the peasant army did not care about the enemy at that time. They plundered and plundered, leaving a little bit of food behind.

The most important thing is that Bai Guangen has no burden to collect grain and grass from Wei Qiang in Qinzhou.

If they win this battle, then this little food and grass will not matter, it will even be his achievement.

If they lose this battle, this little food and grass will be nothing. The entire Qinzhou will become the land under Liu Chengzong's rule, and Ming Dynasty will have no control over it.

So they forced grain and grass to be confiscated in Qinzhou, insurance!

Xie Erhu's Mongolian soldiers discovered Bai Guangen's traces as early as two days ago, but Mo Yujing refused to let him speak out, and strictly restrained the Mongolian brigade cavalry, prohibiting them from attacking Bai Guangen's army.

"The commander is also short of food."

Xie Erhu was a leader of Mongolian horse bandits. In the past few years, he had been focusing his energy on learning to lead troops. If he had some spare energy, he would also use it to improve his Chinese language. His sagacity was only slightly less than that of Zhang Tianlin.

At this moment, he couldn't understand Mo Yujing's thoughts at all. He blurted out: "I, Xie Erhu, am watching here. How can I let him steal the commander's food? I will give it to the commander..."

But when Mo Yujing shook his head and said nothing, Xie Erhu stared at him blankly for a long time before he thought about it: "Let him grab it first, and then grab him after you finish?"

Mo Yujing nodded slowly: "Thank you, Commander-in-Chief, I am waiting for him to finish robbing him, and then kill him."

In fact, Bai Guangen was not robbing food, but others were requisitioning food.

Bai Guangen, a rogue official and soldier, was better at collecting food than many genuine generals with clean backgrounds.

As soon as he stationed his troops at Qinzhou Guard, he began to apportion them.

Bai Guangen did not assign the task of collecting grain to the village chiefs, village elders, and local security guards, but directly assigned the task of collecting grain to the officers of the Qinzhou Government Office and the Qinzhou Guard.

He is not stupid. He would be hated if he directly asked the common people to share the burden. It would also be easy for the hereditary military attaches of Qinzhou Guard to share the same hatred. Instead, he gave the task to the officers of Qinzhou Guard and gave them the power to collect grain. Maybe they could not collect it so cleanly. But they can also share hatred.

Of course the officers of Qinzhou Guard were not happy to do this, but there was nothing they could do about it.

For them, it is better to let them go to others to collect food than Bai Guangen to ask them to collect food.

For a time, the hereditary military attache of Qinzhou Guard led his troops in all directions, heading straight to various villages in the mountains and plains, handing out fatal recruitment lists one after another.

Rice, noodles, beans, persimmons and dried fruits, even firewood, charcoal, stones, vegetables and fruits, mangers and vehicles are all available. If not enough, people will be hired as porters. In short, they will not be empty-handed.

There are some things here that Bai Guangen clearly wants to conquer, and there are also some things that Qinzhou Wei wants to conquer.

Mainly stone, wood, and small men. During the current war, several commanders of the Qinzhou Guard saw that Bai Guangen had come to Qinzhou to collect food. They clearly sensed that something bad was going on in the Guanzhong battlefield to the east. They had to think about it. To protect yourself, the first task is to strengthen the Qinzhou Acropolis.

No one is a fool. No matter how tight-lipped Bai Guangen's army is, people can guess that the Ming court's heavy military group in Shaanxi was obviously divided and surrounded by Liu Chengzong.

Otherwise, we would not go to Qinzhou to collect grain. If we want to collect grain, we should go to Guanzhong to collect grain.

Unless they can't contact Guanzhong at all.

Bai Guangen was quite cautious and always paid close attention to observing the situation in the east, but he did not consider the direction of Pingliang Mansion in the north. He only sent troops to garrison along the Wei River while observing Gongchang Mansion in the west and Fengxiang Mansion in the east.

Facts have proved that his observation was not in vain. He found signs of Ming army activities in Gongchang Mansion.

At first, I thought it was the marshal's army that had changed its flag but not its equipment. Later, the two sides came to fight and discovered that they were really their own people. The commander over there was Ningxia General Tu Shixian, who had been dispatched by Cao Wenzhao earlier to lead a battalion to attack the empty Lanzhou.

As a result, Lanzhou was not empty at all. Wang Wenxiu, who was guarding Lanzhou, was summoned to Guanzhong by Liu Chengzong. Brigadier Yang Yao, who was originally stationed in Hehuang to look after his family, immediately moved to Lanzhou.

Moreover, he was more radical than Wang Wenxiu's garrison style. He dispatched General Feng Yu to lead the chariot camp and stationed it at the entrance of Gongchang Mansion, directly blocking the Ming army's westward advance.

They even brought a thousand new soldiers from Qinghai to the training guards prepared by Liu Chengzong for the Tianshan garrison. They were led by Dalai Taiji, the commander of the Tongzhi and the leader of the Weilat Duerbot tribe, and marched into Lintao Weiyuan County.

In fact, this training guard originally had three thousand troops, but at the beginning of the Eastern Expedition, Liu Chengzong transferred two thousand troops to Gansu, led by Commander Zhong Hu, to fill the empty Ganzhou. Yang Yao transferred troops this time and directly The training guard is gone.

But as a result, Ningxia General Tu Shixian was dumbfounded.

What the intelligence told him was that Liu Chengzong made a large-scale eastward march and imposed violent conquests before the war, which turned people's hearts against him. He also took away all the people in the Marshal's Mansion. The rear was extremely empty, so it was easy to capture Lanzhou.

As a result, he led an army of 3,000 troops and rushed to the vicinity of Jiankou, where they were immediately besieged on all sides.

The Jinglu Guards in the north were the eastward marching regiment of Gansu Governor Cao Yao. They were gnawing at the forts on the Ningxia border wall. They separated small teams to harass him along the small mountain road, but they couldn't do it easily.

In Lintao Prefecture in the south, Dalai Taiji led a training camp with a thousand troops. This group of soldiers was not strong, but they were equipped with rocket cars built by Liu Chengzong for his eldest brother Liu Chengzu. rocket barrage.

The garrison in the middle is the most annoying thing.

The topography of the pass is very narrow, and Feng Yu's back is against the Jincheng Valley that connects to the Yuzhong Basin. The car camp is spread out on the spot, like a rogue.

As long as the car camp does not encounter Liu Chengzong's rockets, it is a rogue on a narrow battlefield and is almost invincible with the same force.

Tu Shixian couldn't rush forward and couldn't defeat him. His firearms and artillery were not as strong as Feng Ru's, and he didn't even have as many troops and rations as Feng Ru's. He was worried about being surrounded in the Guanchuan River Basin, so he had to retreat to Gongchang Mansion.

And Gongchang is a very strange place. It originally had a prefect. Wang Wenxiu sent Luo Rucai and Li Wanqing into Gongchang Mansion to seize the pass and died when they were there. It was not them who killed him, but he committed suicide because he was afraid of losing the territory.

Later, there was no prefect for a period of time, until this year, on the eve of Liu Chengzong's war, the Ministry of Civil Affairs selected a Shanxi native to be the prefect, named Qiaoqian Gao.

But when Gao Qian took office, the situation in Gongchang Mansion became even worse for the court.

Liu Chengzong launched the Eastern Expedition, and half of Gongchang Mansion was occupied by the marshal's army. The part that was not occupied by the marshal's army was also occupied by the peasant army.

The Four Heavenly Kings Li Yangchun occupies Xihe County, the neat king Fatty Zhang occupies Ningqiang County, and the sweeping king Zhang Yichuan occupies Ningyuan County. There is only Fuqiang County, which was robbed by Zhang Xianzhong earlier, and there is no one around.

When the prefect moved to a higher position, he settled in Fuqiang County and led the prefect of Gongchang from afar.

The reason why Fuqiang County was able to avoid being invaded was not because of the high relocation, but because Fuqiang County itself had become the base camp of the Ming court after Gongchang Prefecture was invaded.

Here are not only Wang Ru, the magistrate of Fuqiang, but also Guo Erzhao, the magistrate of Ningyuan County who was defeated in the battle with the peasant army earlier, Zhang Zhaozeng, the Lingong Dao Bingdao, Zhao Yinggui, the official of Gongchang Prefecture, Zhu Tingzhang, the general magistrate, Tian Yinglong, Zhang Yingchun, and other people from various places. There are more than 1,000 county health officials, military officers at all levels, and government officials.

Earlier, the Four Heavenly Kings Li Yangchun and the Tibetan King Fatty Zhang came to attack Fuqiang County. They were jointly defended by the soldiers Zhang Zhaozeng and the official Zhao Yinggui. The peasant army could not attack for a long time. The county magistrate Wang Ru rode out of the city alone and attacked these militia troops. The leader was very polite and made peace with his mouth.

It can be considered that everyone worked together to save Gongchang Mansion, the last city belonging to the Ming Dynasty.

Tu Shixian fought several battles with Feng Yu in the north. He still had more than 2,000 Ningxia border troops under his command. He rushed south to Fuqiang County and gave the magistrate's move to Gao and others a shot in the arm, but their military-political relations were poorly handled. .

Everyone in Fuqiang County hopes that Tu Shixian can lead his troops into Longxi County, which is under the control of the government, while Tu Shixian's Ningxia tired soldiers hope to enter Fuqiang County. They have already fought successively with Cao Yao, Feng Yu, and Dalai Taiji.

To put it bluntly, if Tu Shixian had the ability to attack Longxi, he would have attacked Longxi and would not have withdrawn to Fuqiang County.

On the other side, Bai Guangen, who was in Qinzhou Wei, with the help of the Qinzhou government office, raised the first batch of more than 100 carts of rice, grains and vegetables in just a few days, and immediately started shipping them eastward.

Then, without any suspense, the Mongolian brigade cavalry from the Marshal's Mansion swarmed in from all over the mountain roads, frightening Bai Guangen's battalion into confusion. They abandoned their vehicles and ran away.

It was not that they were afraid of the Mongolian cavalry, but as soon as they discovered the Mongolian soldiers in the Marshal's Mansion, people thought that the armies of Cao Wenzhao and Zuo Liangyu in the east were defeated or even annihilated, and they could not afford to resist.

Bai Guangen, who was in Qinzhou, obviously had more experience than the frontier troops under his command, and did not think that Cao Wenzhao had been defeated.

But his feeling was no better than that of the frontier soldiers under his command.

It is said that Bai Guangen was not afraid of anything, and he had a group of real outlaws under his command. Anyway, he later became a general of the Ming army, acquired weapons and equipment, and his combat effectiveness increased to a higher level.

Even those genuine Ming army generals, he refused to accept anyone and considered himself the third best in the world in fighting.

Only Liu Chengzong, a legendary figure in the Shaanxi rebellion, was his inner demon.

It's like being beaten by someone when you were a child, and still being scared when you see that person staring at you when you grow up. If you want to get rid of your inner demons, you have to really step on that person's feet to achieve inner transformation.

However, this was not the first time that he had met Liu Chengzong. He had long seen Liu Chengzong's strategies of taking full advantage of his military strength, freely displaying his mobility, and favoring frontal strong attacks and partial division breakthroughs.

In Gansu, when Liu Chengzong's troops approached the Jiayu Pass, Zhang Tianlin rushed left and right inside the pass, blowing up half of his elite battalion into the sky.

At Zhuanglang River, Liu Chengzong besieged Yingpanling, and Zhang Tianlin blocked his retreat at Huangyangchuan. A group of monks chanted sutras in front of the formation and saved half of his camp.

The biggest problem here is that although he is eager to try, he always wants to do something big in front of Liu Chengzong. He has a dissatisfied desire of "Dad, I want to impress you", but every time... he even touches the shadow of Liu Chengzong's main force. When he didn't arrive, he was slapped on the ground by the side master and couldn't get up.

Bai Guangen's judgment was correct at this time. He directly realized that this was not a signal that Cao Wenzhao and others had been defeated, but that all the Ming troops in Guanzhong were surrounded by Liu Chengzong.

But realizing these things is useless.

The soldiers came to report that Mongolian cavalry was found on the outskirts of Qinzhou, describing it as a golden horse.

The words reached Bai Guangen's ears, and the image of a rocket taking off directly appeared in his mind. Together with the sharp whistle of the short burning gunpowder, the sense of imminent beating came to him!

Bai Guangen immediately called his subordinate Qianzong Bai Chaozai and ordered to gather troops.

"What the hell do you care about the grain truck? Get the grain in it and let's go find Tu Shixian!"

"Quick, quick, quick, Chao Zai, let the brothers disperse and march and don't get together, Zhang Tianlin is here!" (End of Chapter)